Phillip Paulwell’s announcement that a bench mark has been set for the price of delivery of electricity to the grid would appear to give the impression that the numbers Energy World International gave were realistic.

Energy World International EWI gave Phillip Paulwell a figure of US 12.88 per kWh and the offer was so good he jumped off at it and was willing to place his career on the line for the company.

I did some basic work and recognized that EWI could not have delivered electricity to the grid at US 12.88 per kW you can find that link using the search feature.

Paulwell did the very same thing [before] with netserve. At the time the GOJ led by PJ Patterson had indicated that 10,000 IT jobs would have been created and the GOJ would have funded some portion of the project and offer concessions to whoever could deliver these jobs. The pot was sweetned further when Paulwell suggested that the greater the number of jobs the greater our committment in terms of funding and concession to the company.

Netserve proposed to offer a whopping 40,000 jobs and with glee the offer was accepted and was said to be too good to refuse and so Phillip Paulwell jumped head first without completing his due diligence. The people of Jamaica ended up forking out over $183m to the operators, who took the money rented a office, dumped some computers in it and took flight, never to be seen again.

The modus operandi was this was the best offer on the table, it would have provided 40,000 jobs and it was something I could not have truned my back on , that was Paulwell at the time.

Looking at the EWI situation, the situation is exactly the same, one company offers what no other company can seemingly match . Listen to this 25 yrs worth of LNG at a fixed price no mater what the market prices was for LNG?

Does the above make any financial sense ?

Well to the PNP it does since a former finance minister in the PNP forward sold millions of dollars of bauxite, which would have eventually earned us billions of dollars, had we not been so gullible and exercised good financial judgment.

The very mistakes Paulwell made with Netserve he turns around and make with EWI. To make matters worse, having screwed up, he turns around and says to the new team put in place to execute the project, you must get delivery to the grid at US 12.88 cents per kWh and the plant must be delivered by 2016.

Phillip Paulwell and the PNP cabinet has set an unrealistic price target for the delivery of electricity to the grid and also an unrealistic deadline and I do hope that at least the private sector persons on board will “call them out” on this.

This is what drives bad decisions, when politicians set targets that are not based on scientific and financial analyst but is instead based on political expediency designed to satisfy a personal and/or party agenda.

Paulwell cumulative mistakes has cost Jamaica over $1B and counting.

EWI performance bond, which the minster allowed to expire $750

Cuban light bulb scandal $236M

Productivity train/Goodyear Building – St Thomas > $200m

Netserve $ 183

….. Next ……

Total thus far $1.369B ! [ He still has a long way go to catch Omar Davis 🙂 ]

Amazingly he is still a minister, still has the very same role and has hopes of becoming Prime Minister of Jamaica.

May the Lord help us all should Phillip Paulwell ever become Prime Minister of Jamaica.